Serving the UC Daviscampus and community since 1915, The California Aggie is the official campus news source. Its coverage includes UC Davis campus news, Aggie sports, science and technology, city of Davis and local news and the local arts scene. Between March 2014 and September 2016, new articles have only been released online. Beginning in September 2016 -- at the start of the 2016-2017 academic year -- The Aggie resumed its print publication, and the paper is published 10 times per quarter. The weekly print edition, published each Thursday, complements The Aggie's unique digital content, which is updated daily on the paper's website.

In February 2016, The Aggie's staff successfully campaigned to pass the "Print the Aggie" initiative, which appeared on the ASUCD Winter Quarter 2016 election ballot. The initiative, supported by 61.53 percent of the students who voted, raised student fees by $3.73 per quarter and allocated this money to The California Aggie. The measure will last for five years, beginning in 2016-2017, and its passing returned The Aggie to regular print publication for the first time in three years.

There is an opinion page that includes editorials authored by the Aggie editors, guest opinions, political cartoons and letters to the editor. The Aggie also publishes columns, a daily calendar of events, classified advertising, and of course, the crossword and sudoku puzzles, which may be the paper's most popular feature (especially in boring lectures).

It can be found in every corner of campus, in front of most major lecture halls, and even in a lot of community locations outside of campus. The Aggie is a self-sustaining unit of ASUCD, meaning that it generates its own income (entirely through advertising sales) and does not rely on a yearly operating subsidy. The paper is distributed for free, and up until recently, was the last student newspaper in the UC system to publish daily. They have since reduced their circulation numbers and are only printing on Thursdays, although they do publish articles, columns and news briefs throughout the week online.

You can read the current issue of The Aggie at theaggie.org in pdf format. Their online archives only goes back to 2008-03-31. The Aggie also has a twitter feed for breaking news updates, links to Aggie articles and links to other items of interest to Aggie readers.

The Staff

Over 125 students work in various capacities for The Aggie, including managers, desk editors, photographers, writers, copy readers, layout artists, graphic artists, sales clerks and advertising representatives. The Editor in Chief holds the highest position at the Aggie, overseeing the operations of the entire organization. The Campus Media Board appoints a new Editor in Chief once a year.

The Editorial Board

The News room The Aggie publishes editorials that represent the collective opinion1 of the editors on a range of topics. The California Aggie editorial board is made up of the Editor in Chief, the Managing Editor and the news editors.

Finances

The Production room The Aggie's operating budget for 2009-2010 was approximately $208,000. This budget covered stipends for editors and managers, printing costs, and the costs of running an office five days a week. Until 2016, all of the Aggie's income came from advertising sales. The Aggie had for the past few years been running a deficit due to a national trend away from print media advertising. This, however, has been reversed in 2010-2011. Between 2011 and 2014, however, The Aggie continued to run large annual deficits.

In 2015, editor in chief Scott Dresser drafted legislation for an initiative that would, if passed, bring in $1.2 million to The Aggie over a five-year period. The legislation became the "Print the Aggie" measure, which passed in February 2016. The Aggie now operates with an annual budget of over $300,000. Around $230,000 of The Aggie's revenue comes from student fees.

The California Aggie is a unit of ASUCD, but is not 'governed' by the organization in the way that other units are. ASUCD delegated control of the Aggie to the Campus Media Board through an amendment to the ASUCD constitution. The Aggie does not receive any direct financial contributions from ASUCD, but does get its space in Lower Freeborn Hall for free. The Aggie also pays ASUCD for its accounting. In the event that the Aggie's reserves run out, ASUCD would be responsible for paying for any deficits that occur out of its own capital reserves.

Special Issues

The Aggie runs three special issues every year.

The Orientation issue is geared toward new freshmen and transfer students and runs on the first day of Fall Quarter.

The Best of Davis issue features the "people's choice" for best business establishments in the city of Davis. UC Davis students, faculty and staff are eligible to vote. This issue runs mid-Winter Quarter. Best of Davis winners are listed on Davis Wiki for 2007, 2008, and 2009.

The Grad issue is geared toward graduating students and includes many "end of the year" features. It runs with the last issue of Spring Quarter.

The paper moved to using standard broadsheet in 1974; before that they used a tabloid format. The Aggie used to publish a Spoof edition at the end of the year (or April Fool's day). The spoof edition was not published in 2004, due to unusually poor taste in the 2003 edition. However, the spoof edition was revived in 2005 and was received with much acclaim by readers.

The paper went from occasional color to daily color under the direction of then editor in chief Andrew Whelan in the spring of 2004. It went back to occasional color in Fall 2007 in an effort to stop the growing deficit in their budget. In 2009, The Aggie cut color altogether, and in Fall 2010, it began to print in color only when advertisers already purchased color ads. Beginning in 2016, The Aggie began publishing in full color.

Starting in January 2009, they no longer printed Friday editions of the Aggie in order to save costs. In of April 2013, they cut down to only printing on Thursdays in order to save costs and increase quality and length of content. Due to financial troubles, editor-in-chief Elizabeth Orpina decided to cancel print publication and cut all staff pay in March 2014. The Aggie resumed its weekly printing each Thursday in September 2016.

The reason the website doesn't have a very extensive archive is that the website was moved to The College Publisher Network in 2005. That edition, operated by y2m networks, essentially used the Aggie's content to generate revenue for their youth marketing division. It promoted web advertisements over the articles, leading you to have to scroll down before you could read any real content. That version of the site made its debut on Friday, December 2, 2005; however, it did not feature any archives and broke all links to the old story urls. When they changed to the current version of the site back with Creative Media, College Publisher refused to give the Aggie a copy of the electronic archive, because they're a bunch of dicks. The new site, which came online in 2008, has much less advertising and links to AGTV stories included. It also broke a bunch of wiki links again.

The Aggie had a long standing feud with ASUCD. The two formerly hashed out their differences at the end of the year with a sloshball game, but a few years ago, ties to ASUCD have become so strained that the Aggie played KDVS instead. In 2007, The Aggie staff played itself. The game picked up again in in 2009, where the Aggie beat ASUCD in softball-sloshball. In Fall 2010, the two played kickball-sloshball at ASUCD's request. The Aggie still won.

In Summer 2005, Sudoku was added by then Editor in Chief Daniel Stone and Design Director JonasMari so that people have another distraction after they get frustrated with the crossword.

Comments:

2010-02-19 13:46:23 I have found the California Aggie's "Best of" annual event to be incomplete and not a very good guage of what is good or bad in Davis by any means. For example, this years best of did not include nearly 60% of the businesses located in Davis at all, save for one spot where you could write in a vote on the Bookstore section. Another fault of the Aggie's best of is the cover of the actual award insert. They photographed many establishments yet placed non-winners on the cover of the article such as placing Dimple Records photo on the cover (the second place winner) over Armadillo Music (the actual 1st place recipient).

It seems to be a very tunnel-vision style view on this fine city and it's commercial locations. —WesOne

Try reading some of the articles. Maybe I expect too much from students, but I find most of the articles to be very shallow and dull. —hankim

I agree 100%. The articles, while sometimes interesting, most often remind me of shallow, plastic self serving drivel on the part of the individual writers. — WesOne

2010-05-24 17:05:56 The unfortunate fact is that the Davis Aggie is inferior to some high school papers and is an embarassment for an otherwise outstanding University.

The reporting is shallow in all areas. Even something as mundane as sports leaves much to be desired. Why, for example, did a number of the women's volleyball players decide not to come back this year? Perhaps not the most earth shattering question, but something beyond the rehash of the athletic department press release. Aspiring future journalists should learn to ask questions which provide some enlightenment.

The columnists are also an embarassment, with much of the focus on their respective drunken escapades or embarassing behavior. One would think, for example, that their might be an attempt to encourage debate over issues of broader interest. For example, should the University continue with Division I sports at the present level? Should it cut back? Or should it discontinue them all together? And the Aggie should report on how much is spent, how many are involved, graduation rates, how many athletes were below Davis's admission standards (and wouldn't be here otherwise.) —RMS

2011-08-20 12:08:58 This is a great newspaper. I have never seen the student body so interested in reading news, that's for sure. I don't read it as often as I should though. I have had some friends who have been staff for the Aggie. They were dedicated to every aspect of their jobs, and really put out 100 percent to make sure the paper was as good as it can be. I know for some of you, the articles may not be to your liking, or the comics may not seem too funny, but this is a daily effort. These guys put in a lot of work, and try to please one of the largest UC populations in the state. So, I think we all need to give them a hand for their hard work. Thanks Aggie! —davisaggie1

2014-03-15 21:04:38 I find it very interesting that the financial problems for the Aggie started about the time that Lamar Heystek stopped writing for them. I suspect that if he was still writing columns about Safeway, we might still have 5 issues a week. —BrentLaabs

Footnotes

1. The process by which the board decides what stance to take is based on majority (not unanimous) opinion of the board, though they try to integrate differing opinions. However, the Aggie reads "Editorials represent the collective opinion of the Editorial Board," despite the fact there may be disagreements and editors might not be present. The Editorial Board acts collectively in their decisions.